Casualty of a Lightning Storm

We had a neighbor in Princeton borrow our black Angus bull to breed their small head of cows. The timing worked well for us as our cows should be all bred and we didn't want to worry about our bull bothering our neighbors during the summer in Redmond.

We have only a small handful of friends we loan our bulls to. They have to have good fences and not have other cattle nearby to entice the bull to jump the fence.

Beefus, our Angus bull, had a large area to travel about as he kept company with the neighbor cows. We received a phone call from the neighbor. He was very upset. They found Beefus at the bottom of a 100 foot cliff. Dead. They weren't sure what happened and wanted to know what they owed us.

Nothing. It wouldn't be any different than if he'd fallen off our cliff. But it was a mystery as to what happened. The neighbors wife took photos and inspected the area where he fell from. There hadn't been a scuffled but they noticed his meat was as if he'd been cooked. that's when we put two and two together and realized he must have been hit by lightning when they had a dry lightning storm. He was probably standing on the top of the cliff, playing king of the hill as most bulls like to do and was hit by lightning, causing him to tumble from the cliff.

Beefus is the black Angus the Hereford is Herfy. They were playing in this photo. 

Originally we had thought maybe a neighbor bull got in the field and the two scuffled like the photo and that's how Beefus went over the edge. But lack of evidence to that proves he was struck by lightning.

Nature has a way of always showing the farmer/rancher that there are powers much more powerful than we.